Rebecca Kaplan Saved The Oakland As For Oakland She Says At the Thursday, August 28th, Alameda Democratic Party Forum featuring 8 of the 15 Oakland Mayor's Race candidates and ran by Oakland's former Mayor Elihu Harris, Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan (At-Large) stood up and made the claim that she saved the Oakland A's for Oakland. What she was referring to was the details that led to the new 10-year lease between the Oakland Athletics Baseball Team, and the Oakland-Alameda County Joint Powers Authority, on which she sits. Kaplan has said to this blogger before that, right when the Mayor of Oakland objected to the original lease deal, she called Oakland A's Owner Lew Wolff to inform him that it would all be worked out, and to work out some of the kinks in the negotiating process. At the forum, Councilmember Kaplan doubled down on her statement, and got eyebrows to raise among the panelists, and extra air taken in by the attendees. Afterwards, I asked Kaplan about her statement, and she was kind enough to explain for this video. I then turned to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, Oakland's former Mayor Elihu Harris, and Joe Tuman, who's also running for Mayor of Oakland for their comments. (And I would have liked to talk to others, but many were leaving as I was talking to the people you see in the video.) In my talk with Tuman he said that Kaplan's run for Mayor was supported by Lew Wolff, and at the time she's negotiating with him for a new A's deal. But in truth, that's not so, exactly. What Wolff did was give $1,000 to Rebecca's now closed “Safe Streets Local Jobs" initiative - not directly to her Oakland Mayor's Race fund. But Joe is correct in pointing to the "optics" of the situation - how it looks politically. He comes close to accusing Wolff of influence peddling without saying so, outright. The “Safe Streets Local Jobs" money was reportedly not transferred to her Mayor's Race Fund, but. And the "but" comes in the fact that Kaplan herself gave $60,000 to her own campaign this year. Where did that $60K comes from? Some say a trust fund. But her reps will not comment as of this date. Finally, others have pointed to Rebecca's action of voting against the a version of the deal at the Oakland City Council, when it came back, and but she did then vote for it at the final Coliseum JPA meeting. Stay tuned. A video-blog post for Oakland FocusIFTTT
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